We’re cheating a little with this week’s “band,” weirdlings. Meow the Jewels isn’t a band per se; it’s more of a remix project, created hardcore hip-hop duo El-P and Killer Mike, aka Run the Jewels. The weird part? All of the remixes are composed primarily out of cat sounds. Why didn’t anyone think of this […]

Scanner

Recording artists have been using found sounds and ambient noise in their works for decades, but few have done it in ways more innovative or controversial than Robin Rimbaud, aka Scanner. Beginning in the early ’90s, Rimbaud, who is based in London, has used cellphone scanners, police radios and other devices to record electronically transmitted conversations and turn them into musical compositions. His work tests not only people’s notions about what constitutes music, but also people’s notions of privacy. It’s a little disconcerting to think that your cellphone chat with your girlfriend might wind up as raw material for an avant-garde electronic composer.

These days, Rimbaud’s become known as a “conceptual artist” who composes film scores, sound installations and various more high-brow projects in the art world. He also records with a experimental band called Githead. But he’s still trolling the ether with his cellphone scanner, too. On his latest Scanner album, “Rockets, Unto the Edges of Edges” (released earlier this year), he even sings a little–but the snippets of ghostly, disembodied, electronically transmitted voices are still in there. If every word in the dictionary had its own soundtrack, Scanner’s music is what you’d hear when you looked up “alienation.”

Scanner is great. I really like his piece Pasage de Recherche. 😀
Just wondering…ever listened to Aphex Twin or Boards of Canada? Or Roger Doyle’s magnificent album Babel? Something about Scanner reminded me of them.

It’s definitely worth a listen, and from what I’ve read of this blog, I think you’d probably enjoy it. It’s an experimental album, all about this giant, futuristic tower set in some SF world. It has around 5 CDs altogether (!), and each one is about a different floor of the tower.
My favourite is the bit with the radio shows played in the tower…great for night-time listening. The kind of weirdo radio show you’re always hoping to find, but never can.

Geogaddi by Boards of Canada has to be one of the greatest things I’ve ever listened to.